In our contest we are giving away two $25.00 Gift Cards (we willselect two winners at random) at one of the following stores:Home Depot, Jo-Ann's Crafts or Amazon.com. If you are one of thewinners, you get to choose which gift card! This contest ends onApril 30th, 2005.

The best way to organize a workshop is to use a peg board. Afteryou hang an item on the peg board, draw a line around it, thatway you won't have to guess what goes where once everything has aplace. We also keep screws and such in baby food jars, we nailthe jar lids to the wall. It's a real space saver.

A good place to store saw blades is in unwanted record albumcovers. If you don't have any record albums just visit garagesales on Sunday when people are closing down their sale. Youlikely find someone will to give away some records.

When looking for a small nail, screw, button. pin, etc, in yourcan or jar of misfits and/or left-overs, be sure to dump them onnewspaper, typing paper, or magazine. When finished, just lift,form in a "vee" and pour back in can or jar. Beats picking themup a few at a time.

Before storing paint, put some paint on the top and side of thecan so you can easily see what color it is. If the can is almostempty, transfer it to a smaller container since paint cans takeup a lot of shelf space. If you may want to try to recreate thecolor in the future, write the color information on a piece ofpaper and tape it to the side of the paint can.

If you enough wall space, hang shovels and other garden toolsupside down on your walls. For smaller tools you can get a pegboard that you can mount on your wall and fit with a variety ofpegs and hooks and store tools that you need to have handy.

Keep a garbage can right by your workbench to keep debris fromcluttering up your work area. If you have more than one work areaput a trash can next to each. Try to find convenient place tostore items like safety goggles so that they are near where youused them the most, hanging them on the gall by your table sawfor example. Keep a small hand broom near your work bench tosweep debris into a garbage can.

Baby food jars are great for storing small nails, screws andother items so that they are easy to see. You can put the jars ina old spice race to keep them together. You can also attach themetal lids to the underside of a shelf, the jars can then hangfrom the shelf and be seen easily.

A cluttered, sawdust-filled shop encourages accidents. Keep thefloor around machines clear of obstructions that could trip youat a vulnerable moment. Sweep up sawdust as necessary. It maymake your shop floor slippery, just as sand does on ashuffleboard table.

Store your sandpaper in a three ring binder. Just uses somepocket folders to keep the sandpaper organized by different gritsin the binder. Label the binding of the three ring binder"Sandpaper" so that it's easy to see when sitting on shelf.

Twist ties work well for wrapping up power tool cords and keepingwires together. Rubber bands also have a variety of uses and aregood to keep handy. Take an old bike inner tube and cut it intorings to make some heavy duty rubber bands.

Fishing tackle boxes work great for keeping small power tools andtheir accessories and bits organized. Whenever I see fishingtackle box at a garage sale or rummage sale I grab it. You canuses stencils and spray paint to label the outside of the box.

When you have loads of small things to store in your shed orworkshop, such as nails, screws, etc, here's a cool tip:

Save jam jars and screw the lids to the underside of yourworkshop shelves. You can see what is in the jars andscrew/unscrew the jar of your choice. Just make sure your shelfis secure and sturdy enough to take the extra weight.

A good use for old gutters, either wood or metal, is a debrisgutter for the side of you work bench. Just attach it to the sideof your work bench so that you can sweep debris and saw dust intoit. You can have it at an angle so that it drains into a garbagecan. Pretty nifty!

Operator's manuals are valuable. They tell how to safely use anappliance or tool, where to get it repaired, and often how tomake adjustments or repairs yourself. They also enhance the valueof an item if you eventually decide to sell it. But these manualstend to disappear, in the shop or in the bottoms of drawers.Place them in a folder and tuck the folder in the home files. Inthe workshop, manuals can be hung on a nail near the tool theypertain to.

The transparent Glad-Ware Soup/Salad containers make excellentstorage boxes for anything from buttons to screws or staples ornails. They have a solid lip around the top, and they slide likedrawers if you use the louvered panels from the backs of oldfridges as dividing walls between stacks of them.

You can of course make the side and dividing walls from wood or acouple of layers of strong cardboard and just cut grooves intothem for the container lips to slide in. That way you can takeone container from the bottom without knocking the whole stackover.

Those Soup/Salad containers are about $2 for five and are quitedurable, as long as you don't step on them.